Unless otherwise indicated herein, the description in this section is not prior art to the claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
There is known an image forming apparatus that includes an intermediate transfer unit. The intermediate transfer unit unitizes a drive roller, a tension roller, and an intermediate transfer belt stretching around both rollers via a frame member. At a lower side of the intermediate transfer unit, a plurality of image forming units located along a running direction of the intermediate transfer belt. When an image is formed, a primary transfer roller sequentially transfers toner images of respective-colors formed by the plurality of the image forming units onto the intermediate transfer belt. Then, the transferred toner images are transferred by a secondary transfer roller onto a paper sheet at once. At an upper side of the intermediate transfer belt, a plurality of toner containers, which house color toners corresponding to the respective image forming units, are located.
Here, the image forming apparatus includes various kinds of heat sources such as a fixing unit. This causes a problem that a toner is aggregated by heat that is from this heat source, and heats an inside of the toner container.
For example, to solve this problem, there is disclosed an image forming apparatus that includes a ventilation path located between a toner container and a sheet discharge tray, which is located at an upper side of this toner container, causes a blast fan to generate airflow in this the ventilation path, thus cooling the respective toner containers.